A Brief History of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics: Reports, Mergers, and Information Regulation

Contributions by Federal Trade Commission Economists to Consumer Protection: Research, Policy, and Law Enforcement

“…Paul Pautler, who served for many years as the BE's Deputy Director for Consumer Protection, has gathered the history of consumer protection economics at the FTC and summarized it in a forthcoming article (Pautler 2014). He provides copious citations to source documents and personal interviews, and his article should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding the role of economics in consumer protection at the FTC.…”

“…While the FTC's deception and unfairness statements can be said to be cost-benefit approaches to law enforcement, they are not as thoroughly economic in nature as is true of, say the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. (Pautler 2014, p. 51)…”

“…Pautler (2014) traces the beginning of serious work by FTC economists on consumer protection issues to the 1960s, when economists began to work on land frauds and pyramid schemes. Around the same time, according to Pautler, economics director Willard Mueller promoted affirmative disclosure regulations for gasoline, octane, and cigarettes.…”

“…Scherer invited R. Dennis Murphy to leave his academic post to explore how economic analysis could advance consumer protection policy. A division within BE devoted to consumer protection began in 1978, when BE Director Comanor and FTC Chairman Pertschuk brought in Assistant Director John Prather Brown “to obtain better information about the potential downsides of his actions and to provide some benefit-cost analysis” (Pautler 2014).…”

Consumer Protection Economics Symposium

“…Yet, consumer protection economics is a sparsely developed literature, particularly when contrasted to the economics of competition or antitrust (Pappalardo 2020). As noted by Pautler (2015, 2018), the economics of consumer protection is not yet recognized as a cohesive field. It draws from various fields of applied microeconomics, including the economics of information, labor economics, economics of the household, industrial organization, experimental economics, behavioral economics, law and economics, regulatory economics, and welfare economics, and makes use of tools from applied statistics and econometrics.…”